Apple Locks iPhone 6/6+ NFC To Apple Pay Only

Ronin Developer writes From the Cnet article: "At last week's Apple event, the company announced Apple Pay — a new mobile payments service that utilizes NFC technology in conjunction with its Touch ID fingerprint scanner for secure payments that can be made from the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus or Apple Watch. Apple also announced a number of retailers that would accept Apple Pay for mobile payments at launch. However, Cult of Mac reports that NFC will be locked to the Apple Pay platform, meaning the technology will not be available for other uses. An Apple spokesperson confirmed the lock down of the technology, saying developers would be restricted from utilizing its NFC chip functionality for at least a year. Apple declined to comment on whether NFC capability would remain off limits beyond that period." So, it would appear, for at least a year, that Apple doesn't want competing mobile payment options to be available on the newly released iPhone 6 and 6+. While it's understandable that they want to promote their payment scheme and achieve a critical mass for Apple Pay, it's a strategy that may very well backfire as other other mobile payment vendors gain strength on competing platforms.

Comments

So much for mobile payments in Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

NFC technologies are already very well established here (you can wave your phone in front of a vending machine to purchase a drink!), and it's disappointing to see that iPhone users have at least a year to catch up with everybody else.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[theNetImp]

iPhone is extremely popular here. Apple has been popular in general in Japan for a long time, so the brand carries it's weight pretty well here. Most iPhone users just put a cover on their iPhone that they can put their NFC card into and use it that way. The NFC card company then has an iPhone app to manage how much ÃfÃÂ¥ is on the card, etc...

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[AmiMoJo]

The iPhone is popular here but I wouldn't say as popular as it used to be, or is in other countries. I remember them putting out rope barriers for the 5s launch and hardly anyone turned up at Yodobashi in Akiba. Right now interest in the iPhone 6 doesn't seem that high either. There are too many good rival phones.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[phayes]

Good job in exposing your ignorance. Apple Pay uses the contactless specification of the EMV standard to provide "industry-standard EMV-level security” -- essentially the existing SoftCard EMV standard. There will be no wait, Apple Pay can be used wherever Softcard is deployed.

Here. Read this and the associated documents.

Apple Pay's adds onto the SoftCard a level of security in using the secure fingerprint reader & in not being able to see user transactions (whereas Google Wallet leaves itself in the loop so that they CAN see each transaction).

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[Paradise Pete]

Apple's iPhone 5s Is The Dominant Smartphone In Japan

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[swillden]

put a cover on their iPhone that they can put their NFC card into and use it that way

Terminology clarification: If it's in a card, it's not NFC, it's a "contactless smart card". NFC is, specifically, a variant of the contactless smart card protocols embedded in a larger, battery-powered device. It does emulate a contactless smart card, which is how it enables payments, but it does a lot more as well. NFC devices can also act as smart card readers (note that "reader" is something of a misnomer; it's just two computers talking to one another) and they can also act as RFID tags or readers (or writers, for tags that are writable).

This broad array of capabilities, BTW, just highlights how unfortunate it is that Apple is limiting it. In Android-land, not only can you use NFC to make payments (Google Wallet, whatever the ISIS Wallet has been renamed to), but there are a lot more uses:

1. You can download one of many smart card reader apps (or write your own) and use them to read any contactless smart card you have around, including many payment cards. What you can see depends on the security protocols implemented by the card, obviously, and also depends on whether your app knows the right commands to send. If you like you can buy your own Javacards, program them, and write your own app to talk to them, to do whatever it is that you'd like to do.

2. Most of said smart card reader apps also support reading and writing RFID tags, which you can buy inexpensively. Many people have come up with uses for these, such as automatically changing phone configuration (volume, etc.) when a particular tag is scanned. My Moto X offers the ability to register an RFID tag as an unlocking device; whenever I scan one of the registered tags, my phone unlocks.

3. Ever since Jelly Bean (IIRC), Android has used NFC as a method to initiate device-to-device data transfer. On several occasions when my wife and I have been driving separate vehicles to the same location, I pull it up on Google Maps, tap my phone to hers and touch the screen, and then it's on her phone. You can transfer pictures, files, and anything else apps care to support. NFC isn't actually used for the data transfer to avoid having to hold the phones together for a long period of time, but it identifies the pair of phones that wish to do the transfer, which is then carried out through Wifi or mobile data.

... and more. Here are some more concrete examples of clever uses to which people have put Android's NFC capabilities: http://trendblog.net/creative-...

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[swillden]

essentially the existing SoftCard EMV standard

SoftCard EMV standard? Wow, that's like calling HTTP the Google networking standard. EMV existed long before SoftCard (formerly called ISIS), and in fact long before Google Wallet (which predated SoftCard/ISIS by quite some time)... before NFC existed, even.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[AmiMoJo]

More recent stats: http://bcnranking.jp/news/1408...

Why pick stats from one particular month instead of the latest ones?

Also note that the iPhone has few models, where as sales for other manufacturers are spread over many more different ones. According to those stats over 70% of phones sold are not iPhones, and that's despite the extremely heavy promotion.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[ZiakII]

Why pick stats from one particular month instead of the latest ones?

Because I can't read Japanese....

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[Em Adespoton]

Apple Pay is basically a contactless EMV wrapper for iPhones. SoftCard complies with EMV too, but I've seen nothing indicating that Apple Pay will work with SoftCard processors. This is purely a contractual thing though; there's nothing technical to stop it from working.

What this stops is someone writing an app that uses NFC for whatever they want -- if someone wants to use Apple Pay plus NFC with their own EMV-compliant processor, they just need to talk to Apple's legal department. If someone wants to write an app that leverages Apple Pay, they can also do that.

Basically, you can't roll out something like Google Wallet for an iPhone, but you can support all sorts of NFC payment types with it.

Re:So much for mobile payments in Japan

[serbanp]

I wonder how many slashdotters will get this reference...

Re:Jailbreak

[cbhacking]

That NFC will be made available via jailbreak, I do not doubt.

That it will happen quite that *fast*, I do doubt. Apple has gotten really good at lockdown.

Note that Lockdown != Security. Security means preventing unauthorized access. If you can't even authorize *yourself* to get access, it's either not "security" or it's not your device (or both).

If you want NFC, go with Samsung, or HTC, or Nokia, or one of the many other phone OEMs who have been including NFC hardware and software that lets you use it for years now.

Nope they are clever

[thegarbz]

The mobile payment market is completely fragmented. Apple is by far not the first company to announce a payment scheme, however it is the first that has managed to make some concrete deals with several companies and it's the first that actually has a chance at taking off.

Apple has locked it down? So what? How is that any different from the last several years where competitors have had NFC and payment support? Why is the upcoming year suddenly going to backfire them right at a time where service providers will likely be questioning whether it's a good idea to promote a system which can't be used on Apple's much advertised phone?

I'm no fan of Apple, but you can't argue that they aren't strategically clever bastards.

Re:Nope they are clever

[N1AK]

I'm no fan of Apple, but you can't argue that they aren't strategically clever bastards.

I can, and I will. I already regularily use NFC both via NFC enabled bank cards and my NFC phone. Nothing apple is doing is new. They're just big enough that when they say jump more people listen; literally the only thing about applePay that stops it being an irrelevant me-to is that it is bundled with an apple device that companies know will sell by the container load. Exactly what strategic cleverness does it take to release something that many other people already have, where your success is based on you being the biggest company in the room?

Re:Nope they are clever

[Dahamma]

literally the only thing about applePay that stops it being an irrelevant me-to is that it is bundled with an apple device that companies know will sell by the container load.

No. It's that and the fact that they only released the feature after lining up a shit-ton of major retailers and banks to support it, as well as a near frictionless method of using it (w/ iTunes and Passbook, etc) and marketing to back it all up. The NFC part of it is practically incidental to the feature as a whole.

Sadly the Google NFC implementation will eventually be seen as the irrelevant version, even though it came out 2 years before Apple's... because they totally fucked up the UI, launch, and marketing, things Apple has nailed.

Re:Nope they are clever

[gnasher719]

You regularly use NFC for payments? You must be some kind of wizard.

In the UK, an awful lot of debit and credit cards are NFC enabled, and an awful lot of stores have NFC enabled terminals. For payment, you just hold your card against the terminal. Or just hold your wallet against the terminal; the only problem with that is when you have more than one NFC card, you can't control which one will be used (but it's guaranteed that only one payment will be taken).

Actually, I can use NFC payment in my company's canteen to pay for my lunch or breakfast, that's how common it is.

The limitation is that this only goes up to £20, because anyone stealing your wallet can use your card that way until the card is cancelled.

The difference with Apple Pay is that they can't use a stolen phone, there will likely be no limit because the payment is authenticated with your finger print, and nobody ever sees your debit or credit card number which avoids fraud.

Re:Nope they are clever

[nblender]

You regularly use NFC for payments? You must be some kind of wizard.

The US isn't the world.

I live in Canada and I also regularly use NFC for payments. Last night I bought groceries with NFC after I bought some diesel with NFC. At the beer store I bought beer with NFC. I bought some irrigation supplies with NFC.

Some restaurants have NFC on the little pay terminals they bring to your table.

Re:Nope they are clever

[MachineShedFred]

They don't have to interoperate, they just need to co-exist. Much like Visa and MasterCard.

Competition is a good thing.

Re:Nope they are clever

[gnasher719]

Im not clear how that would work. NFC is NFC. Apple pay / Google wallet should interoperate.

Since they are both for _making_ payments, I'd expect them not to interoperate at all. However, both should interoperate with the same devices that are made for _accepting_ payments. At least one would hope so.

Re:Nope they are clever

[swillden]

Oh google? You mean mean the Google Wallet that isn't available in large parts of the world? They need to deploy terminals? That's a fail right there.

Apple Pay will be able to use Google Wallet / ISIS (SoftCard) terminals, and vice versa. They all use the same protocols and base technology.

Apple Pay will be successful, and Apple will garner much praise for that success from people like you who don't know the industry, but what's really going to make it successful isn't anything Apple is doing or has done, but what Visa and MasterCard did two years ago, when they announced that the liability shift will be imposed in the US in October 2015. That policy change by the card networks will give merchants huge financial incentive to get all of the necessary terminals deployed, which is why many of them are now (and have been for some time) gearing up to integrate and deploy chip-capable point-of-sale terminals.

And, if you want to look at the causes for Visa and MasterCard's decision... the biggest single factor was almost certainly the deployment of Google Wallet, which moved NFC payment in the US from a "someday" possibility to "people are using it now". At the end of the day, Apple Pay will owe most of it's success to Google.

I don't want to disparage Apple too much here, though, because they have been able to do one thing of huge significance, and it is their market position and clout with the mobile network operators (MNOs) that made it possible: They helped push through the deployment of network-level tokenization. This is a somewhat abstruse technical detail, but it's pretty important.

Right now Apple Pay, SoftPay and Google Wallet all use different approaches to how they push the transaction through the networks. Google Wallet uses a "proxy card". When you pay with Google Wallet you're actually paying with a Google-issues MasterCard debit card. That's what the merchant sees. Then Google turns around and charges whatever backing instrument you've specified (Wallet balance, bank account, debit card or credit card). This approach offers maximum flexibilty; if someone dreams up some payment mechanism and Google integrates it, you can get your payments directed to it. The downsides are that (1) it's the same credit card number every time, which means that if it gets stolen and used fraudulently (which is far harder than for a magstripe card) then Google has to take on the fraud liability; (2) the point-of-sale transaction is "card present" while Google's transaction with your payment instrument on the back end is "card not present", which means if the backing instrument is a credit card Google has to eat the difference between the front and back-end transaction fees; and (3) all transactions pass through Google, which means Google sees how much you spend through Wallet and where (which has some upsides as well; I like the payment notifications it enables and the ability to look up my payment history on any device as well as the level of control it offers me). Note that Google can't see what you bought, but obviously a lot can be inferred from location.

SoftPay (nee ISIS) uses "issuer tokenization". You can only pay with credit cards from a certain (and still fairly small -- AMEX, Chase and Wells Fargo) set of issuing banks. The banks issue "tokens" which look like credit card numbers but are only good for a single use. These are stored in the secure element on your phone and transmitted to the merchant when you pay. Security is arguably better than with Google Wallet, and there are some corner cases that are less problematic. SoftPay doesn't get involved in your transactions, although there are some indications that the app may deliver information about them to SoftPay and to your carrier, though they don't provide that information back to you as a convenient transaction log like Google does. The reason the list of cards you can use is small is because each individual issuer has to get their systems set up to support token issuance. That'

Re:Nope they are clever

[StormCrow]

The difference with Apple Pay is that they can't use a stolen phone

Really? Are you saying that the phone needs to be unlocked before it can be used to make a payment? Sounds incredibly inconvenient.

You have to use the TouchID sensor with your fingerprint. I don't see how that can be considered inconvenient, it takes under a second and requires basically no additional thought or movement.

Re:Nope they are clever

[liquidsin]

McDonald's has NFC enabled Interac handsets in their drive-thru. I wave my wallet at a machine for coffee a couple times a day. It's really more uncommon for me to find a vendor/retailer who *doesn't* have the NFC terminals these days. Back on topic, does this mean the new iPhones won't be able to use their NFC for anything besides payments? I quite like touching the backs of two NFC enabled android phones together to send links, contacts, photos, etc.

Re:Nope they are clever

[tlhIngan]

And Google isn't? I thought Android won? Face it, they don't bother with talking to anyone, they just expect them to come to them to beg working with them because they are so fucking awesome. And if they do, they abandon them after a couple of years because Google refocuses.

The problem with Google's implementation is that Google wants to be the payment provider. This is "better" in some ways because it means more flexible funding schemes (Apple requires Visa, MasterCard or American Expess). However, it has a major downside - Google is now a major participant in your transactiona because the retailer charges Google, and Google charges your payment provider, so now Google gets the details of your transaction, which depending on the retailer can include what item you actually bought.

The other downside is it means Google has to work with every payment system out there to get them to accept Google Wallet as a valid payment mechanism.

Apple's method means it works anywhere that accepts contactless Visa, MasterCard or American Express cards. Because Apple Pay appears to the retailer as a regular credit card so retailers have to do zero effort. Google Wallet makes it so they have to sign up with new payment providers and all that to specially take Google Wallet.

Use Apple Pay and Apple doesn't know about the transaction as it's a more standard credit card transaction that's handled between banks.

As for NFC restricted to Apple Pay? That's iOS 8. It most likely means the APIs for it are far from stable and/or Apple doesn't have a good way of handling events in NFC under the current security architecture. iOS9 can easily change it.

it's just like TouchID - last year it was only for bypassing the PIN and for iTunes purchases. In iOS8 it's allowed to be used for third party authentication in apps. You can bet iOS9 will have NFC APIs for app use.

Re:Nope they are clever

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

I have a hunch that NFC is locked down because of the secure element. Not that it's not secure. But rather that there's probably some detail about NFC chipsets where once you have it some mode, it's hard to switch in and out of it.

So say ApplePay is active, then in order to do stuff with the NFC reader for CustomApp1, you need to turn off ApplePay and then reload all the state data for CustomApp1. Then If you decide to switch to CustomApp2, then it has to unload all the state data for CustomApp2. Meanwhile, the user flips out because they can't pay for their soda using ApplePay while CustomApp2 is launched. That'd be shitty.

(I don't know if that's actually the problem. But while playing with NFC on Android, there's a lot of fucked up situations I've seen/heard of including Samsung Galaxy S2s bricking their own NFC reader permanently. So I wouldn't be surprised.)

Re:Considering Republicans...

[R3d M3rcury]

Considering Republicans are so against NFC and haven't allowed any bank to invest in this technology

Really?

Too Late for Aus

[upuv]

NFC has taken off in Aus in a big way. With most retail outlets having terminals that take Paypass/Tap&Go ( NFC payment brand names here ) accepted across competing financial institutions. There is zero chance Apple will make any headway here asking retailers to forgo the already established infrastructure. Also basically asking retailers to stump up money to install another payment network. Given the existing network was no additional cost to them. Apple is making a mistake here. I don't think it will hurt them too much but Apple Pay will certainly not be a reason for market share growth of the platform. The larger screens most certainly will give them some growth but not this ridiculous shackle.

Re:Too Late for Aus

[phayes]

Australia & Europe NFC seems to be SoftCard based from what I understand. Apple Pay will be compatible with Softcard (with additions like needing the fingerprint reader to authorise sales instead of just accepting all requested payments blindly).

Look here for more info.

Re:Too Late for Aus

[thegarbz]

NFC has taken off in Aus in a big way.

NFC yes, mobile payments, no. The only reliable solution I have found at the moment is customers of Commonwealth Bank and Mastercard (not OR, you can't use it with another mastercard) can make NFC payments from the phone. Google Wallet is not available (not supported anyway, if you have root you can side load it). And while Samsung claims they made a deal with VISA back when the Galaxy S4 came out, I've so far failed to get any solution working on my phone without rooting and sideloading apps.

This may not work out so bad for Apple. Remember how we have had 3G video calling since the late 90s yet when Facetime came out on the iPhone people collectively said "OMG AMAZING MUST HAVE!" Don't underestimate the stupidity of the collective.

Re:Too Late for Aus

[pipedwho]

In Aus, the NFC terminals (Paypass/Tap&Go/etc) all use the same protocol, in the same way that all the Visa/Mastercard/Bankcard magstripes were written in a common industry format. American Express/Diners were outliers and originally required their own terminals, which is why they always had to fight an uphill battle to be accepted by smaller merchants. These days, the EFTPOS machines and banks have facilities for multiple card types, and the EMV standards encompass implementations for both NFC and Chip&PIN.

The NFC in smart phones use the same RF protocols that are in place for other wireless payment cards (and can easily be updated to provide slight protocol changes if necessary). The hard part is that Apple needs to partner with the big payment providers to allow their generated 'one-time' payments to be correctly cleared in the same way any given issued credit card is cleard. Currently Visa/Mastercard/etc do this for their branded cards and are the biggest players in this sector, which is why Apple needs to work with them to avoid having to set up any of its own infrastructure (beyond it's internal payment gateway and integration with backends at Mastercard/Visa/etc).

There is no reason once deals are struck between Apple and Visa/Mastercard in Australia, that any merchant here would require a change to their installed Paypass/Tap&Go systems. There may be some technical integration problems between Apple and Visa/Mastercard that need to be sorted out first, but that work has most likely already been done (or mostly done), otherwise Apple wouldn't have announced it with such fanfare.

Like everything, for some reason these deals take longer to happen in Aus when the technical and business solutions may have already played out elsewhere in the world. Take iTunes for instance; we had to wait much longer than the US, because it took longer to get the distribution agreements worked out thanks to our local incumbents with pre-existing contracts being reluctant to renegotiate and move with the times.

Re:Jailbreak

[Anonymous Coward]

That NFC will be made available via jailbreak, I do not doubt.

That it will happen quite that *fast*, I do doubt. Apple has gotten really good at lockdown.

Note that Lockdown != Security. Security means preventing unauthorized access. If you can't even authorize *yourself* to get access, it's either not "security" or it's not your device (or both).

If you want NFC, go with Samsung, or HTC, or Nokia, or one of the many other phone OEMs who have been including NFC hardware and software that lets you use it for years now.

And I'm sure we'll all be very eager to make use of the third party mobile payment options made available for your jailbroken iPhone on Cydia, courtesy of a bunch of hackers you've never heard of before.

Re:Jailbreak

[mwvdlee]

Which will be useful for the average iPhone 6 user in 1,000,000,000..., 999,999,999..., 999,999,998...

NFC isn't used for just payment

[_xeno_]

Apple does realize that NFC isn't only used for payment systems, right? My camera can transfer pictures to a smart phone using NFC. It allows you to take high quality pictures of something and then post them straight to whatever social media you're using without going through a computer. It's a really nice feature when you're wandering around someplace photogenic and don't want to be limited to a cellphone camera.

Oh, right, Apple declared proper digital cameras "dead" in their iPhone 6 keynote. I guess that feature will never make it to iOS then.

Not to mention other types of data transfer that's possible with NFC like easily sharing contact information or things like that.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[thegarbz]

A favourite of mine is S-Beam which makes it easy to setup a file transfer with one click. No need to go enable bluetooth, dig through settings, pair, join, then transfer the file. Just tap two Samsung Galaxy phones back to back while the image / video / file is open and tap the screen. It sets up a wifi connection (I think, though it may be bluetooth I can't remember) between the devices and sends the file across.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Sockatume]

How many people actually bother to use those features though? Is it really worth building in OS-level support for a feature that Samsung doesn't even include in its advertisements any more and almost nobody actually has?

This is the essential philosophical difference between Android and iOS. Android says "yes, because some people might use it"; iOS says "no, because not enough people will use it".

That's not to mention the platform synergy effect that Apple wants to cultivate: you can do the same stuff as NFC, if your products are all Apple ones...

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Anonymous Coward]

pfft, a pale imitation of apple's version. s-view requires tapping and other work, apple's version uploads your photos to icloud and they are automatically shared with the entire world

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[AmiMoJo]

I use it with a sleep monitor to read back data. Many other health devices use it. It's better than Bluetooth for things that don't need real time monitoring because it's much lower power. My sleep monitor supports the iPhone but the battery lasts a few days instead of a few weeks if you have one.

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[Insomnium]

You're making the assumption someone wants to send their pictures to a server. Or the transferable file is a pic at all. The thing is. Apple does not have a fully functioning bluetooth, contact sharing or any wireles medium whatsover and it will not have a fully functioning NFC either. This is not new. And I am talking about fully functioning, not some "it has bluetooth cause my 200e apple bluetooth speakers work on it."

Re:NFC isn't used for just payment

[pipedwho]

The speed of NFC is a few hundred kbps and is not designed for bulk data transfer. The NFC is most likely used to setup a much faster Bluetooth or Wifi transfer in a way that guarantees that the transfer has been initiated by a device in close proximity.

With longer range protocols (Wifi/Bluetooth/etc), you need other ways to pair the devices to make sure you're transferring your naked photos to the right endpoint.

With NFC, what you see is what you get, but the NFC layer is only used for connection setup.

Re:Jailbreak

[cbhacking]

Also a valid point. I do a fair bit of phone hacking, but am very cautious about what I install from whom (it helps that I can decompile apps pretty well by now). Most people aren't, and somebody is going to want to take advantage of that.

iOS NFC Only Being Used for Apple Pay

[glennrrr]

The same basic information came out on Ars Technica the other day. But the slant on that was not that Apple was locking out 3rd party credit card processors, but rather that the NFC hardware was not being used for anything else because Apple was not ready to say the whole stack was perfect yet, from a security standpoint. This is all new code and new hardware, for Apple, and they would rather not have stories about massive credit card theft come out next week. So, this is an example of slant driving angry diatribes in the comments; if it'd been presented in a more neutral tone people would have judged Apple's actions in a more balance way.

Re:iOS NFC Only Being Used for Apple Pay

[skeldoy]

NFC just can't be "secure" like that. The whole thing about security on NFC is the proximity needed to communicate. You can easily eavesdrop on the communication by sitting in between the devices communicating. So there is really no security work needed here. What they need is to just implement the standard that all the other phones have had for years. It's that simple. The only reason that they don't start in that end is that they see this thing as serving their own purposes first and foremost. If they spend an entire year "polishing the stack" then they get a bigger piece of the pie. If they started by implementing this thing properly right away and then building their service on top of that - that's another story. All they really needed to do in order to get this right for the rest of the world was to follow the standard. The Android implementation is completely open source so getting that done would be a matter of weeks not years.

WTF

[skeldoy]

I've been a long time iPhone user (every model since it's inception) and I have liked all those phones a lot. I've made some apps and have made myself completely tied down to the platform by spending money on apps and music. This NFC-thing is kind of like magic. I have a friend with that capability on his phone and it seems to me that this NFC-thing is a complete no-brainer in terms of interconnecting devices. I was actually waiting for the moment that Apple finally introduced this NXP-chip into the iPhone. Apple want to restrict the use of the chip to ApplePay? Guess what: In the country where I live - there is already an NFC-infrastructure and the banks have apps that use it - just not on iOS. What to do? Should I ditch the whole Apple universe and go for a Linux-phone and at the same time leave my wallet at home. Yeah. I think I might just do that. One year of waiting for Apple to "maybe" get their shit together and realize that the world is larger than the US; that's a long time for something that's been around for years now. Bye bye Apple. It's been good. iOS is the best OS and the iPhone is catching up. But this is it for me. I want that wallet-killer right now - not "when Apple decides that it has enough monopoly in the US to maybe open it up for other actors".

Re:WTF

[clemdoc]

Given that the EU forced Microsoft to include a browser choice and keeping in mind their recent dealings with Google, it will be interesting what they have to say about this.

Re:WTF

[Bogtha]

You're massively overreacting to a biased headline. What is meant by "Apple locks NFC to Apple Pay" is simply "Apple have only provided APIs for Apple Pay so far".

This is pretty standard practice with new Apple hardware features.

Bluetooth? Originally developers couldn't access that at all, only the higher-level gaming APIs used it.

Touch ID? Again, developers couldn't access that at all to begin with, but iOS was released yesterday and that introduced an API for developers to use it.

The camera? Originally developers could only tell the system that they wanted a photo. Now we've got fine-grained control over shutter speed, etc.

Apple have a habit of introducing hardware features then providing a third-party API after they've had a chance to see it deployed at a large scale. If you are a long-time iPhone user, you've seen them do this time and time again. The fact that there isn't an API for it on day one doesn't mean that they are trying to lock it away.

No just payment!

[ramriot]

If Apple proceeds with locking away the NFC API from developers they will be making a Huge mistake. NFC is not just for payments, it is a use agnostic technology, and as such can be used anywhere you need short (1-2") data communications i.e.
# Door locks / home security
# Wifi tap to secure.
# Bluetooth Pairing
# End to end encrypted messaging tap to exchange / sign public keys
# Second factor online authentication
etc etc.
On Android all these uses are available because the API is open.

Re:Jailbreak

[rolfwind]

Oh wow, the "my corporate company brand is better than your corporate company brand" fight.

Re:You don't need to make "deals"

[Khyber]

"You misspelt nowhere,"

I haven't had a single problem using Google Wallet anywhere, from TN to CA to WA. That's including stores and banks.

Re:Considering Republicans...

[Attila Dimedici]

What is most interesting is that the poster you replied to does not seem to realize that Republicans have not been in a position to stop banks from doing such things for almost six years now.

Re:Jailbreak

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wow, the "my corporate company brand is better than your corporate company brand" fight.

Yeah, we call that "Slashdot", or more generally, "the Internet". Welcome.

Re:Jailbreak

[Anonymous Coward]

And which banking company would release the necessary code / keys for a jb device to interface with their systems?

None, I suspect.

You MIGHT be able to use it for basic sharing - that requires no "special" code.

Re:Jailbreak

[ArcadeMan]

You mean, there's no such fights between Windows and Linux users? Xbox, Playstation and Wii users?

Hell, just say something like "vi is better than Emacs" and you'll have a fight between Linux users.

Apple's notion is not "versus them", it's "versus good enough".

Android is good enough.

Re:Jailbreak

[lordbeejee]

my wife ... He

Re:Jailbreak

[stealth_finger]

Apple's notion is not "versus them", it's "versus good enough".

Android is good enough.

iOS is not.

Re:Jailbreak

[Noah Haders]

be honest. when was the last time you owned an iphone? because anybody who uses iOS for a period of time, and doesn't come at it with jaded eyes, likes it. my guess is you already have a feel against it, and only tried it out at the store for a couple mins.

Re:You don't need to make "deals"

[BronsCon]

All of which are in the US. Which was the point thegarbz was trying to make. His use of the word "nowhere", as a diametric opposite to the annoying all-caps "EVERYWHERE" he was countering, made it sound like he was trying to imply something else; he completely destroyed his own (factually correct) argument by being over-dramatic.

Re:Jailbreak

[stealth_finger]

Owned? never. Used? all the time. Everytime my wife says how do I do x? And at work I'm responsible for maintaining over 50 ipads and a few mac suites (educational setting) so it's not like I just dislike them because it's the in thing. I dislike them because I have to use them all the time and it's awkward to get them to do what I want how I want. I'm always searching for work arounds and alternate methods when they're supposed to 'just work'. Very few people can give me actual reasons why 'macs are better' when I ask. I'm in the camp of hate windows the least, except 8. 8 can go suck a fat one.

Re:Jailbreak

[david_thornley]

Also, while you can get Android phones in the iPhone price and quality range, you can't get lower-end iPhones (the worst Apple will sell is what was top of the line two years ago). You can get a less expensive and still quite functional Android easily.

Re: Jailbreak

[david_thornley]

Apple's not particularly interested in the transaction fees, although of course they'll take extra money if they can get it. Apple's primarily interested in moving hardware, so their primary aim is to make iDevices attractive. I don't know what the reason for keeping this proprietary is, but there is some fundamental reason why Apple thinks it will make iPhones more attractive.